Mat-thah-yos

It was just another day as Mat-thah-yos sat in his tax booth. He sighed as he looked over his take so far. The ugly names and nasty looks weighed down his soul, since everyone knew that tax collectors cheated. Sometimes he longed for the better way of life that Yeh-shuah taught. He wished he could speak personally to the great teacher, but even the religious teachers treated tax collectors as traitors, the lowest of the low. He knew he couldn’t approach Yeh-shuah because he, Mat-thah-yos, was the scum of the earth.

The day wore on until he looked up in surprise to see someone watching him. “Follow me,” Yeh-shuah said with a twinkle in his eyes.

Mat-thah-yos stood up and started to leave the booth, but then hesitated for a moment. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins and put them into the money box. “I quit!” he shouted to no one in particular, then left with Yeh-shuah.

Mat-thah-yos’ Feast

Several days after the tax booth visit, Mat-thah-yos gave a feast in honor of Yeh-shuah to show his appreciation for rescuing him from the unhappy life of a tax collector. He wanted his friends and relatives to meet Yeh-shuah, so he invited them all to come, even those with doubtful reputations.

Yeh-shuah sat as the guest of honor, thoroughly enjoying the chance to talk to these people, many thirsting for a better way of life. The Faris-Ahyos, he knew, would seize the opportunity to discredit him for socializing with these social outcasts, but he also knew, someday, some of those sitting at this very table would become messengers for the truth.

The Faris-Ahyos leered at Yeh-shuah and asked his disciples, “Why does your Master feast with tax collectors and other evil people?”

“Leave them alone,” Yeh-shuah said when he overheard the conversation. “Those who are well don’t need a physician, only those who are sick. You need to learn what ‘I’d rather have mercy than sacrifice’ means. It’s not the righteous who are called to repentance, but sinners.”

None of the Faris-Ahyos could answer this, so they left and went straight to Yo-hawn Baptace’s disciples. “Look,” they said with scorn, “this Yeh-shuah is a glutton and a drinker while you starve yourselves and Yo-hawn is in prison. What’s going on?”

Perplexed, Yo-hawn’s disciples came to Yeh-shuah and asked him why the Faris-Ahyos and themselves fasted while he and his disciples did not. “Remember what Yo-hawn said, ‘The friend of the bridegroom rejoices at the bridegrooms voice.’” Yeh-shuah replied. “Should the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is still with them? The day is coming when the bridegroom will be taken, and that will be the time for fasting.

“Yo-hawn’s message is this: No one tears a patch from a new garment to mend and old one. The new garment will be ruined, and when the old garment is washed, the patch will shrink and the tear will be worse.

“Again, no one puts new wine into old wineskins, because the old skins will burst and the wine will be lost. New wine is put into new wineskins. And no one who drinks old wine wants to try the new, because he thinks, ‘The old is better.’”

The old garment and the old wineskins are the ceremonies and traditions of the Faris-Ahyos. The teachings of Yo-hawn Baptace and Yeh-shuah are the new garment and the new wine. You can’t unite the teachings of Yeh-shuah with the Faris-Ahyos religion, because it will result in failure. The Faris-Ahyos do not want the new religion, but unless they discard their traditions and practices, they cannot appreciate the teachings of Yeh-shuah.

Like our politicians and tax collectors today have a higher standard of living than most of us, Matthew, too, had a comfortable, steady job. Like Matthew, though, we must all make a choice. If our work gets in the way of our service to God, we must decide which is most important.



Our priorities and our conduct in this life demonstrate our willingness to be servants of superior beings in the next life. There, we will work for the LORD with all our heart, mind, and strength. That's why we must shed activities and diversions that make us forget we are to serve the LORD wholeheartedly, with nothing held back for ourselves. It's all or nothing, so we shouldn't try to justify anything in between.

We spend time in church sitting, listening, standing, singing, eating tiny little bread crumbs or sipping a few drops of grape juice. This isn't true worship. True worship is demonstrating our subservience to the LORD. We see what true worship is in Rev. where countless beings bow to the LORD and throw their crowns at his feet. We should take our work as servants more seriously here on Earth. One of the main reasons Jesus came here was to teach us our destiny if we obeyed the LORD as his servants.

Servants don't own much of anything except the clothes on their backs bacause the master owns it all. They depend on the master to take care of their needs. That's why Jesus taught us to get rid of our stuff and help the poor. That's why the poor will be disproportionally represented in the Restored Kingdom of New Earth. People with a lot of stuff or money would soon become discontented in a world where they coundn't own hardly anything. At best, they would have to borrow or lend whatever stuff they needed or someone else needed.

This is why we must die to selfishness.

It really shouldn't surprise us that the Pompous Blowhards, the Great Keepers of Religion, would despise those who had no interest in their Religion of Charades. Maybe the Keepers of Religion could fool some or many, but others could see clearly their Blatant Hypocrisy.

The Keepers of Religion fancied themselves spiritually whole, while others, especially tax collectors and non-Jews, were on death-row, dying from spiritual diseases of the soul.


These Blowhards would aim their soul-killing arrows at targets they thought most likely would wound. This is exactly how the Evil One operates, searching for weak or tender hearts, targeting the most vital areas. Everyone who creates discord and alienation possesses the same spirit. We see how Jesus usually dealt with hostility and verbal assaults, though: he went somewhere else.

The Pompous Blowhards were really in a worse condition than the worldy, beer-drinking, tattooed Gentiles and tax collectors they so despised. These were generally less bigoted, and had no delusions of Self-Importance due to some special connection to God. They were actually more open to the Truth as Jesus taught than were the straight-jacketed, locked-in-the-box Religious Leaders.

Rejected by the Pompous Blowhards, Matthew,

We can suspect Matthew's income dropped substantially after terminating his employment by the politicians who stole the people's money so they could have a comfortable income to retire on.

Even John's disciples didn't clearly understand Jesus' mission. Since Jesus did not observe the rules, regulations, and traditions of the Keepers of Religion, they thought the religious rulers might have a legitimate complaint.

Even the disciples observed many of these rules, hoping this would facilitate entrance into their imaginary kingdom. They still pictured him arising to conquer the world and establish his own kingdom, with them, notably, in the highest positions.

The gloom and doom of fasting was worn as a badge of honor in public display. Fasting is a mind/body exercise, training ourselves to deny our appetites and strengthen our resistance to physical desires overpowering our need for obedience to the LORD's requirements.

Fasting is a tool needed to deprogram our selfishness, but of course, the poor misguided religious leaders used it as a weapon against Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus, now a prince, will someday receive his Kingdom. His life on Earth was a gift to uplift humanity from the slime pit of Satanic Slavery.



True fasting, not merely denying ourselves food, is loosing the bands of wickedness, relieving heavy burdens, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke, and drawing out the hungry.

True fasting reveals the very spirit and work of Christ---sacrificing himself to save the world. True fasting, then is self-sacrifice for the good of others. True fasting is surrendering ourselves in willing service to God and man. Our jobs in the next life will require this.

We must be careful lest we, too, become Pompous Blowhards due to our "special connection" to God via our own "prophet". we may have the tendency to think too highly of our "correct" understanding of End Times events or some other revelation given to us by EGW.

I've witnessed arguments between SDA's and non-SDA's over the Sabbath. Of course, at least one non-SDA participant, my father, had no interest in Sabbath-keeping or EGW, and still doesn't, more than 40 years later.

Pompous Blowhards, those suffering from contractures of the heart, only drive others away from their unhappy religion. A contractured heart is deformed, sometimes severely, and no longer functions like a normal heart. There is no room left for mercy and sympathy and kindness and forgiveness.

We can see a contractured heart when someone with a pseudo-religion unleashes their arsenal of weapons and blasts away, shredding all opposition, leaving a trail of blood, guts, and wounded spirits.

If the Pompous Blowhards were to receive some of the Truth according to Christ, they would explode into a huge pile of wicked shards co-mingled with a puddle of New Wine. By clinging to a dead, self-righteous religious experience they turn from the Living Truth and the Power of God.

People today, as in days of old, put their trust in themselves and turn to a legal religion where law is more important than people who have unmet needs and who are flawed.



Only by renouncing our selfishness and becoming one with God can we become new creatures. Only then can we hold the New Wine. Only then can we become animated with New Life. The New Wine is the love of Christ.

People will die if we try to share the toxic Old Wine of Law Without Love and Mercy, but they will live if we share the New Wine of Love Bounded by Law, and they drink it.

Like wineskins, we too, are fragile and must be handled with care lest we spring a leak or explode. Every single human alive on Earth is just minutes away from eternity. Just cut off our oxygen supply and see how long we last. I saw this firsthand when an elderly woman nearly choked to death in the hospital where I work.

A coworker called to me just as I was about to clock out. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she kept saying. I immediately performed abdominal thrusts on the elderly woman as she slumped over in her wheel chair. She was grey, non-responsive, and looked like she was already dead.

The thrusts were ineffective, so I wheeled her into a nearby room and was about to haul her onto a bed when a nurse appeared. We found a pulse but her airway was still blocked. The clock was ticking: she was just a couple of minutes from death.

We pulled her from her wheel chair and laid her on the floor. As we tilted her head back she immediately began breathing, croaking, and spitting pieces of meatball out as her color returned to normal. Just then the EMTs arrived and took her down to ER for xrays and evaluation. This lady would have died without timely intervention. She has since fully recovered.

Physically, we are such fragile beings, but our minds are fragile, too.

...

We can become Old Wineskins if we allow ourselves to become brainwashed by our religion and block out new ideas, the New Wine, that may conflict with our established beliefs, our leaders or prophets, or if we feel threatened by our loss of power to control others. The Old Wineskins are a really comfortable fit and the Old Wine tastes just fine. If it was good enough for our Founding Fathers and Mothers, it's good enough for us. New Ideas or New Beliefs or New Practices are unwelcome when the Old Wine is infallible and perfect and the "Truth".

Once we become Old Wineskins, it may be difficult to trade-in for a New Wineskin. A New Wineskin may not be comfortable for a while until the New Wine adapts to its new home. To protect us from become Old Wineskins and drinking only the Old Wine, we must constantly drink the New Wine found only in the Holy Scriptures. This will keep our minds resilient and flexible and open for better understanding of what is written there.

The New Wine is indeed, like a fountain of youth, for those who drink deeply of the New Wine will never die. Their bodies may fall apart and cease to live, but their spirit still retains their memories. These memories shaped their personalities while they were still living, so, in a sense, those who love, trust, and obey the LORD never die, even though their earthly bodies go to the grave. Their old memories will be kept until no longer needed.

We should be very careful not to reject the New Wine lest we begin to think we know it all and become Pompous Blowhards who imprison themselves in churches, turning the lights out and locking the doors lest something new comes along to contradict their view of religion.